


thirty-nine days

by dicaeopolis



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Other, sir that's my emotional support manpain white boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicaeopolis/pseuds/dicaeopolis
Summary: If Caleb’s mind weren’t so keen, he’d miss the thirty-nine day mark. It’s nothing special, just the day they resupply in Trostenwald before heading further south.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Caduceus Clay & Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 13
Kudos: 59





	thirty-nine days

**Author's Note:**

> steadily working my way through my mollymauk emotions as I work my way through campaign 2. this is set up through episode 58ish
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/medeawasright/status/1339664697692450819) [tumblr](https://dicaeopolis.tumblr.com/post/637781502758977536)

They hadn’t  _ been _ anything. They’d barely known each other - thirty-nine days, as Caleb’s helpful brain points out every time he thinks about it. He’d known some classmates for years and still hadn’t given much of a shit about them. And Mollymauk had been an  _ ass. _ Always pushing, needling, getting under Caleb’s skin like it was a game. Molly breezed through life without a care for himself or anyone else.

And yet.

They lay Mollymauk under a blanket of snow and keep going. There’s friends to rescue, and then a blink of rest in Zadash, and then they’re on the road again and if Caleb’s mind weren’t so keen he’d miss the thirty-nine day mark. It’s nothing special, just the day they resupply in Trostenwald before heading further south.

“Oh,” he says aloud, when he realizes.

Beau looks up from where she’s tying on a sack of rations next to him. “Huh?”

“It’s been thirty-nine days today since Mollymauk died.”

Beau yanks the rope tight. “So?”

“He’s been gone longer than we knew him.”

“And that was helpful to share,” says Beau, acridly,  _ “why, _ exactly?”

Caleb doesn’t say anything back, even when she sends a loud, pointed sigh in his direction.

When Beau loves someone, it’s like watching a frayed live wire, always popping with blinding, painful sparks. She bickered with Mollymauk more than anyone, yes, but she also took watches with him and consumed mind-altering substances with him and let him fall asleep on her shoulder just to mock him about it as soon as he woke up. Beau’s love is messy and ugly and loud, but rarely hesitant. Caleb hears her trying to cry quietly that night. She is very bad at it.

Caleb honestly isn’t even sure if he could’ve counted Molly as a friend. They hadn’t sought each other out - Molly had just been good with a sword when Caleb desperately needed protection, and Caleb had been part of a group when Molly desperately wanted company. Any closeness that arose amongst the lot of them was incidental.

And yet. There had been something, a study in transience.

One entirely platonic wall-push, and a confusing emotion or two about being called a  _ good boy. _

One kiss on the forehead.

A couple of stray winks and bad lines, which Molly did to  _ literally _ everyone.

And a few passing daydreams, when something in Caleb’s drifting thoughts mused,  _ maybe…? _

_ Crush  _ is too strong a word. He hadn’t been pining.

And yet, and yet.

He’d read something, once, that said it takes fifty hours spent together to consider someone a casual friend, ninety to a real friend, and two hundred for a close friend. It had struck him as sensible, when your species’ survival depends on pack bonding. Logical to grow emotionally attached to the people who can also save your ass. It didn’t matter whom one might pick out across the room - love did not ultimately depend upon compatibility, or even choice. It was simply a matter of time. An inevitability.

Thirty-nine days, as Caleb’s damnable mind lets him know, is nine hundred and thirty-six hours, minus a stray few where one or the other of them wandered off. He isn’t actually sure if sleeping counts. He thinks it should. One night, when he’d gone to rouse Molly for his watch, Caleb had made the cardinal mistake of letting himself notice the way the lantern-light fell across Molly’s cheek and long eyelashes. There had been a few deafening heartbeats before the air returned to Caleb’s lungs and he shook Molly awake harder than he needed to.

Frumpkin had adored him, the little traitor.

It wasn’t that Caleb hadn’t  _ wondered. _ He’d just been tentative. He’d found a small, budding thing, and he’d tucked it away safely to grow, and-

Well. A study in transience, indeed.

Caduceus, who is so kind and generous that Caleb doesn’t trust him for weeks, helps them all through it in one way or another. Fortunately, he seems to understand that, whereas Beau wants to ramble about Molly and kick rocks for hours, Caleb mostly just needs quiet and the occasional mug of tea.

But it does come up, because Caleb keeps counting thirty-nines. They’re inside Halas’ pocket dimension for the next one. After that, they’re headed north to the steelworks plant, and Caduceus observes that Caleb seems quiet and Caleb, like a trusting fool, tells him why.

Caduceus looks at him with his large wise eyes and says, “You were something, you and he.”

“We could have been,” says Caleb, very softly.

“Would have been, maybe.”

“I am no great believer in fate, Mr. Clay.” These words come automatically. He’s had to think about it a lot. “People are not stories. Some matters are started and never finished. Some endings do not satisfy.”

“And yet,” says Caduceus.

“And,” says Caleb, “yet.”

Molly’s been dead for three times as long as Caleb knew him before he stops counting time in thirty-nine day increments. Somewhere far to the north, Mollymauk is resting beneath the snow. Somewhere very near, there are people Caleb could describe as friends.

Xhorhas, if anywhere, is a place to begin again.


End file.
